Bonding with Food

As soon as I started thinking about a subject to make my zine about, I knew food was going to be a major element, the only thing left to choose was where to focus my attention. Should I tackle dessert and fill it with wondrous illustrations of cakes? Should I talk about food? Should I draw people and their favorite dishes? Restaurants that I can't live without?

After some very deep soul searching I came up for air with the second best thing about food (right after eating, of course!), cooking. There is something very special about slaving away in the kitchen and produce a master piece that makes everybody ask for repeats, even if only took you 15 mins to throw stuff in a pot and wait it out.

I believe it's the primal desire to provide.

The planningIt didn't took me long to decide the size and materials since I wanted to be able to print it at home, maybe later I'll upgrade it. So, my zine will be constructed from two 11x8.5" bond pages folded in four, which makes 16 pages of 4.25x5" goodness when put together.

Then, I set off to create the mini blueprint of the zine and pick which page will have what.

(Well, at least now I won't get lost, ahem!)

So, let us pour greatness into paper!

Content:

So, since the idea was food, cooking and presenting that food, I decided to share my favorite kitchen experiments. The recipes I know by heart and have done and changed so many times they barely resemble the original instructions. After some pondering I settled on my two absolute go-to:

The messy breaded chicken breast and the auyama mash.

My instructions usually involve getting the right ingredients and throwing everything together. It saves time, effort and everybody seems to love it. Even my own picky mother buys me Auyama just so I can cook it for her. Isn't that the best compliment you can get?

The style:

I had a few ideas of how to organize everything, from an actual typographic restaurant menú to an illustrated restaurant experience for a three course meal. I ended up half mixing ideas and letting go of others because the page count.

I decided to incorporate a certain page-fillin' doodlin' hobby of mine and some zentangles with the idea that, perhaps, some I could have a try at hand lettering. ( Also, I needed an excuse to dust off my wacom and get around to actually illustrate something! )

The result was funky, wobbly and totally me.

These are some of the finished pages:

While I'm still missing 4 pages from the 16 total, the meat of the project is very much done.